Stevenson did not originally intend to begin The South Seas with these chapters on the Marquesas. The first part was to be panoramic and general – it was to look at the great importance of whites in the Pacific.

The Marquesas Islands group is one of the most remote in the world and forms part of French Polynesia. A Spanish galleon fleet came across the Marquesas en route to the Philippines in the 16th century.

French painter Paul Gauguin and Belgian singer Jacques Brel spent the last years of their lives in the Marquesas, and are buried there. Brel composed a famous song, Les Marquises, about the Marquesas Islands, his last home.

According to Cassell and Company records, approximately 20 copies were printed on 2 November 1890 from the manuscript of the first fifteen chapters sent from Sydney.

This manuscript contains the text of all but the last chapter that Stevenson wrote on the Marquesas. Interestingly, the contents list includes the titles of two additional chapters that appear nowhere else in any of the papers and correspondence related to The South Seas.

Robert Louis Stevenson visited Sydney four times between 1890 and 1893. Stevenson contemplated living in Sydney rather than Samoa – but the weather and his illness made him decide to permanently settle in Samoa.*

* AustLit http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A58864

Stevenson sent these pages from Sydney to London in the keeping of his 22-year-old stepson Lloyd Osbourne in August 1890. Osbourne was traveling to England to sell the Stevensons’ former home in Bournemouth on the south coast of England and to have the household contents packed and shipped to Samoa.